What a relief, the board of Royal Bank of Scotland never threatened a mass resignation, says chairman Sir Philip Hampton, and the directors are "wholly committed to their legal and other duties and will remain so". Hold on, there's a sub-clause – "on the basis that they are able to discharge them".

Hampton was referring to his previous remark about how the Companies Act obliges RBS directors to act in the interests of all shareholders, not just the one with an 84% stake. In other words, don't meddle, dear government, with our ability to pay bonuses if we judge them to be in everybody's interests.

But isn't that itself a threat to resign? That's how it sounded, and was presumably intended to sound.

The surreal air at RBS's shareholder meeting today was maintained by chief executive, Stephen Hester, who grumbled about "the process of politicisation" of the bank, quite ignoring the fact that politicisation worked rather well for RBS a year ago when politicians chose to prop it up with taxpayers' money.

Of course, Hampton and Hester have a legitimate point of sorts. It would be self-defeating to single out RBS for special treatment on bonuses. It would be like beating up the playground weakling without laying a glove on anybody else – that's not a way to encourage better behaviour by all.

But Alistair Darling, for one, seems to understand this point perfectly. There seems to be no intention at the Treasury to discriminate against RBS. The fuss still being made by the RBS board about the Treasury's right of veto appears wildly over-the-top – there is surely a deal to be done to allow the bank to retain all the staff it wishes in a bonus structure that both sides can agree is sensible. Finding that structure is just part of the fun and games of running a bank majority-owned by taxpayers.

So it was a little cheeky of Hester today to attribute the £15bn fall in RBS's value in the past three months to politicisation. A billion or two, we might estimate, reflects the fear that the board might flounce out on a flimsy pretext.